In June 2024, an Asian elephant in central Thailand gave birth to a set of twins. The event was considered a miracle, since elephant twins are a fleetingly rare occurrence.Jamjuree, a 36-year-old elephant, birthed two calves — a girl and a boy. It’s the first official record of elephant twins of different genders born in Thailand. According to a statement, the shock of birthing a second calf sent the mother into a panicked frenzy. Rare Elephant TwinsElephants have the longest gestation perio ...read more

X-rays pass easily through biological materials to provide unprecedented insight into the internal structure of everything from biological structures in living cells to broken bones in damaged bodies. But biologists face something of a dilemma in making these images. The ionizing nature of X-rays can break chemical bonds, damage living cells and distort the biological structures under investigation. So biological imaging experiments must balance the need for clear images against the inevitable d ...read more

Hearing the name Tiffany in a historical film or reading it in a historical book may distract the audience from the story momentarily since, surely, people were not named Tiffany centuries ago. It's a modern name, right? But the name Tiffany indeed came from the historical name Theophania, which originated in the 12th century.The Tiffany Effect, or the Tiffany Problem, refers to terms that seem modern but, in fact, have much older roots. The name Tiffany inspired the term because most people thi ...read more

For the first time, researchers have spotted a binary star — a system of two stars that orbit each other — near the Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Binary stars have been observed elsewhere in the universe as a common occurrence, but never in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole. The pair of stars, dubbed D9, was revealed from data collected by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. Presented in a new Natu ...read more

The oldest known saber-toothed predator, dating back over 270 million years ago, appears to have been an animal caught in the evolutionary middle, according to a report in Nature Communications.The gorgonopsian excavated in Mallorca laid eggs, unlike most mammals. But it was warm-blooded, unlike reptiles. Its leg shape and position were halfway between mammal and reptile. And its saber teeth were more commonly associated with mammals like Smilodon, which emerged in North America about 2.5 millio ...read more

NASA is still arguably the biggest player in space, but they don’t accomplish this alone. The agency makes use of various rockets built by companies like Northrop Grumman, the United Launch Alliance, SpaceX and Rocket Lab.Here is a breakdown of the aerospace launch vehicles NASA currently uses — not including retired rockets such as Saturn V.1. Atlas VAtlas V rockets currently come in two series — the 400 and 500. These rockets were developed by the United Launch Alliance — a spacecraft ...read more

One critical challenge for engineers is to measure distances with ever greater accuracy. In recent years, this has become possible with nanometer resolution over distances of a few meters. That means to an accuracy equivalent to about the width of a human DNA strand. Although impressive, engineers would dearly love to have that kind of accuracy over much longer distances. Now Yan-Wei Chen at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, and colleagues, have found a way to do just t ...read more

Picture an octopus that could be deadly to humans. You’re probably thinking of a large creature, and not one that is the size of your palm.But indeed, that’s the blue-ringed octopus, one of several shallow-dwelling species harboring a neurotoxin in its saliva with the capability of paralyzing muscles – an effect that could, if left unaddressed, lead to fatal consequences. There might be around 10 species of these tiny octopuses in the Hapalochlaena genus, but the more well-known examples i ...read more

When a person dies of unknown causes, modern forensic pathologists might conduct a complete or partial autopsy. In some situations, they might use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or computed tomography (CT scan) to help them see deep into the body.Although imaging technology is new for forensic pathologists, the process of conducting an autopsy to understand how a person died is an ancient practice that dates back thousands of years.What Is an Autopsy?An autopsy is an internal and external exam ...read more

Researchers in England uncovered the skeletal remains of 37 Bronze Age individuals, and further analysis indicated that not only were they violently murdered, but their remains may have also been consumed. This discovery could shed light on a darker side of early human history, according to the study published in the journal Antiquity.The remains were initially found at the Bronze Age archeological site Charterhouse Warren, Somerset, in the 1970s. Over 3,000 bones were mixed together at the bott ...read more